An open response to the December 1, letter in the London Times urging PM
Gordon Brown to endorse the Goldstone Report

December 9, 2009 From Maurice Ostroff

In view of the eminence of the signatories to the above letter, it is extremely difficult to understand their unqualified
support of a document that contains serious flaws which are evident to all who examine it objectively. At best one must
assume that being the busy persons they are, the signatories could not spare time to read, much less to analyze the 452 pages
and that they relied instead on the reputation of Judge Goldstone.

In the circumstances, I list below a few
examples that should cause all signatories who value intellectual honesty, to publicly qualify their earlier public support
of the Goldstone Report. The following are examples only. Many more flaws are obvious to the serious reader and I refer to
the following web sites for details. http://www.2nd-thoughts.org/id235.html and http://www.goldstonereport.org/

1. Weapons in
mosques

The report denies Israel's claims that Hamas stored weapons in mosques despite substantial freely available evidence of
this practice. For example the widely reported August 14 Hamas attack on a mosque in which 22 opponents of Hamas were killed
and 125 badly wounded is proof positive that mosques are used for militant purposes, albeit in this instance not against Israel.

Clauses 464 and 465 of the report refer to the investigation of a missile attack by Israel against a mosque in January
2009, claiming that this was an intentional attack on unarmed civilians. Israel claims that the mosque was controlled by Izz
al-Din al-Qassam Brigades and that several named known terrorists who were operating from the mosque were killed in this attack.

That the UN Fact-finding Mission (FFM) found no evidence that this mosque was used for the storage of weapons or any military
activity is a clear case where absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It would be absurdly naive to expect that,
in preparation for the FFM's visit to this site in July, Hamas would have left evidence that weapons had been stored there
in January when the attack took place.

2. Human Shields

The report's declaration that it found no evidence that Hamas used human shields is clearly inconsistent with video evidence
freely available on the internet. More egregiously, it contradicts the statement in clause 477 of the Report itself that the
FFM was aware of a public statement by none other than Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Mr. Fathi Hammad,
that Hamas did indeed "create human shields of women, children, the elderly and the Mujahideen, against the Zionist bombing
machine."

It would be logical to expect that while in Gaza, the FFM's fact-finding role, would have obliged it to clarify this matter
with Mr. Hammad. Instead, the FFM acted as his defending council. Without any investigation at all, the report states that
although it "finds Mr. Hammad's statement repugnant, it does not consider it evidence that Hamas forced Palestinian civilians
to shield military objectives against attack".

3. Colonel Kemp

In a memorandum to the FFM, I recommended that Colonel Richard Kemp who has expert knowledge of warfare in conditions
similar to those in Gaza, be invited to give evidence. My recommendation was rejected for the inexplicable reason that "the
evidence of Kemp was not relevant as we did not report on situations where decisions might have been taken by the IDF "in
the heat of battle". We did not "second-guess" the soldiers in the field or their commanding officers." Inexplicable,
because the entire report deals with both sides acting in the heat of battle.

Even if the FFM disagreed with the views of this expert, the credibility of the report would have been enhanced if his
views had been addressed and it is inexcusable that this was not done. See

In view of the widely reported violent retribution inflicted by Hamas on dissidents, (including being thrown from tall
buildings), the complete lack of testimony in Gaza, supporting the Israeli viewpoint is understandable. On June 9, the Palestinian
Ma'an news agency, reported that Hamas inhibited the ability of witnesses to speak freely and since the hearings were televised
Hamas was able to keep track of every witness.

Because of these limitations, it is inexcusable that the FFM did not carry out its fact-finding obligation to provide
witness protection and actively seek out evidence widely, including from Fatah members whose stories of the abuse of hospitals,
ambulances and schools are readily available on Youtube.

5. Allegation
that children with white flags were shot

Clause 771 tells how the Abed Rabbo family stepped out of their house carrying white flags to find an Israeli tank less
than 10 meters from the door. "Two soldiers were sitting on top having a snack, one was eating chips, the other chocolate,..then
a third soldier emerged from inside the tank and started shooting at the three girls and then also at their mother"

The FFM accepted the veracity of the witnesses without question, including the unbelievable feat, in that tense situation,
of being able to identify exactly what the soldiers were eating. No effort was made to investigate contradictory evidence
such as reports by Palestinian News Agency Ma'an and MECA that the unfortunate girls were killed in collateral damage from
an attack by Israeli planes.

Having said the above, I endorse completely the humanitarian principles enunciated
on the web site of "Independent Jewish Voices" one of the sponsors of the letter to PM Brown, as well as its statement that
the battle against anti-Semitism is undermined whenever opposition to Israeli government policies is automatically branded
as anti-Semitic.

I would add that the struggle for justice is equally undermined whenever unjust and unsubstantiated
attacks on Israel, like those mentioned above, are automatically supported by well intentioned but misinformed humanists.

SincerelyMaurice Ostroff

The original letter published in the Times and the list of signatories

On 1st December a full-page advert appeared in the Times supported by 565 individual signatories and
the following groups: Independent Jewish Voices, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, the Jewish Forum for Justice and Human
Rights, the Jewish Socialists’ Group, Jewish Writers Against the Occupation and Scottish Jews for a Just Peace. Download the pdf here.

We appreciate your Government’s stated intention to build bridges with the Jewish community in the light
of responses to the Goldstone report. To achieve this, it is vital for you to recognise that British Jews do not speak with
one voice on this matter.

We welcome the Goldstone Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza conflict as a key document in the upholding of international
law in situations of violent conflict, and regret your Government’s failure to endorse the Report and its recommendations
at the United Nations General Assembly.

We condemn the vilification of Richard Goldstone, an internationally acclaimed jurist who has made a substantial
contribution worldwide to the development and maintenance of international humanitarian law, and

We note that the preparation of the Report was severely hampered by the refusal of the Israeli authorities
to respond to reasonable enquiries or to facilitate access by the mission to Gaza or the West Bank and that it was only Egypt’s
assistance which eventually allowed the Mission to gain access to Gaza.

We further note that the Report unequivocally condemns not just Israel’s devastation of Gaza but also
Hamas’s indiscriminate rocket attacks against Israeli neighbourhoods and does not in any way deny Israel its right to
legitimate self-defence. We fully support its recommendation that both parties conduct full investigations into the allegations
of war crimes in the Report.

We believe Israel cannot afford, nor should it wish, to exempt itself from the scrutiny of the international
community on these matters. We consider that it is the attempt to do so, rather than the Goldstone Report, that is damaging
Israel. We therefore urge you to endorse the Report at the next available opportunity.